Pierre Eugene Du Simitière and the First American National Museum

RSA Jo u r n a l 23/2012

Gi a n Do m e n i c o Ia c h i n i Pierre Eugene Du Simitière and The First American National Museum

Museums, like schools, libraries, national monuments, and universal exhibitions have been institutions used to build a sense of common identity and civic responsibility. In the history of Europe, as Leora Auslander comments, collections regularly displayed to the public in a systematic way could be considered permanent renderings of the transitory fairs: while exhibitions “grew out of the tradition of annual national and international markets whose purpose was the exchange of goods, museums grew out of a tradition of noble and royal collecting, although their history goes back as far as the Museum of Alexandria” (Auslander 156). In the late sixteenth century, private collections started to proliferate in Europe as spaces within houses devoted to the study and classification of objects, usually of the natural world. The earliest form of collecting in the modern age was the so- called Wunderkammer, fueled by curiosity for all things wondrous, rare, and monstrous. Into the “cabinets of curiosities” of the Renaissance went collections of mirabilia, naturalia, and artificialia all lumped together, in the sense of every possible kind of oddity and rarity. Behind the encyclopedic collecting of the Renaissance was the desire to develop a synthesis between art and nature by recreating the universe in one room. The “cabinets of curiosities” of the late Renaissance and baroque period, open only to select guests, are identified with the origins of the modern museum. The phenomenon emerged in its fullest extent in Italy and Ger- many when the sciences, the arts, and nature reciprocally permeated one another’s fields of action in a balanced, mutual exchange. After the geo- graphical discoveries of the New World(s), exotic animals and plants never described by classical authors could now be known through direct observation. This need to study directly and to experiment anticipated the birth of scientific collections, with the simultaneous development of preservation 132 Gi a n Do m e n i c o Ia c h i n i techniques for plants and animals. In the seventeenth century, the scientific content of the natural history collections had not yet been separated from their artistic and aesthetic value, and much was made of the unusual, the bizarre, and the fantastic. Even if with the arrival of the Enlightenment most of these collections were dispersed and dismembered, a degree of miscellany was still evident in the early museums of the eighteenth century (Galli Michero and Mazzotta 79-80). The exhibitions of artworks, held normally once a year in church clois- ters of seventeenth-century Rome and later in Florence, were followed by another kind of temporary exhibition organized in Amsterdam, London, and Paris for the auction of works of art. In France, after King Louis XIV built Versailles, the Louvre became primarily a place to display the royal collection. Only in the mid-eighteenth century, with increasing pressure to create a public gallery, did Louis XV agree to display to the public a selection of paintings. Later, under Louis XVI, arose the idea of a national museum, devoted to the arts and the sciences, an initiative renewed in the French Revolution after the National Assembly decreed that the Louvre should be set aside as a museum for the nation’s masterpieces. In London the British Museum, which was also a library, had its origins in the private collection of physician and naturalist Sir Hans Sloane, who had put together curiosities, books, prints, drawings, objects of all kinds, natural history specimens, dried plants and antiquities. After King George II gave his assent to its establishment in 1753, the Foundation Act added other libraries to the Sloane collection. Opened in 1759 with very limited hours, the museum displayed a miscellany that tended to reflect Sloane’s scientific interests. Across the Atlantic, in a diverse kind of social and cultural life, far away from the riches of the European aristocracy, the earliest museum efforts in North America were made by the Library Company of Philadelphia’s cabinet of curiosities in the Renaissance mode. Founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1731 as a subscription library supported by share- holders, the Library Company is one of America’s oldest cultural institutions. The Library Society of Charleston, South Carolina, provided the core collection of natural history artifacts for the founding of the Charleston Museum in 1773, but it remained focused on its local region, and only became open to the public in the early nineteenth century. Pi e r r e Eu g e n e Du Si m i t i è r e a n d Th e Fi r s t Am e r i c a n Na t i o n a l Mu s e u m 133

A “Very Curious Man”

These “cabinets” were the eighteenth-century remnants of the vanished Wunderkammern of the Old World with which the American colonies would have had virtually no experience at the time, missing royal collections as well as wealthy scientists. With the American Revolution, after almost eight years of war, the leaders of the new United States worried mostly about the urgent issues of government and nation-building. The very first museum in the new republic grew out of the tireless commitment of private citizens, even those with no considerable estate or social standing, as in the case of Pierre Eugene Du Simitière (1737-1784). Having arrived in the New World as a young painter, illustrator, and translator, and having spent many years researching and collecting, Du Simitière decided to follow the old European custom of setting up a “Cu- rio Cabinet” containing relics of many types, and gradually to expand his collection until it became “greatly celebrated in America, where it is unrivalled,” according to the Marquis de Chastellux who saw it in 1782 (Chastellux 111). Years before its opening to the general public, however, his studio was frequented by travelers and men of politics, such as Conti- nental Congress member Richard Smith who reported in his diary in 1775 that he had amused himself “all the morning in Du Simitière’s museum” (Burnett 209). Considering his focused efforts to improve and spread the knowledge of the natural and civil life of the New World, with special attention paid to the revolutionary period, and considering his personal services for the new republic’s government and the fact that he opened even before national independence, it would not be at all inappropriate to name Du Simitière’s museum the first real museum of America, as Du Simitière himself presented it on the broadside to announce its opening. When Du Simitière officially opened his sundry collection of America- na to the public in 1782, the exhibition was essentially arranged in “natural” and “artificial” curiosities that spanned from specimens and sketches of natural history to modern and antique artifacts. He did not mention (or, if so, probably summarized) his known numismatic collection as well as his trove of printed materials concerning the history of the Colonies and the American Revolution as “a number of miscellaneous Curiosities of various kinds.” Though short-lived and its founder forgotten soon after 134 Gi a n Do m e n i c o Ia c h i n i his death and burial in an unmarked grave in St. Peter’s Church Yard in Philadelphia, Du Simitière’s American Museum predates by three years the one traditionally credited as the first of the republic, founded by the well- known painter Charles Willson Peale in the same city. A scholar, a voracious collector of books and “curiosities,” and the ac- quaintance of three future presidents of the United States and other ma- jor political and military leaders of the time, Du Simitière himself was a “very curious man,” as John Adams described him in an oft-quoted letter to his wife; the epithet “curious” is le mot juste for a man single-handedly able (and always with limited economic resources) to put together one of the best libraries on the continent and its first historical museum. His was a collection of books not dominated by theological or educational purposes, as usually was the case with the ecclesiastical and collegiate libraries of Brit- ish America. He was also a naturalist and a skilled visual artist devoted to pictorial recording and, later, to the Colonials’ cause in the long conflict with England. Aside from the value of his collections of curiosities and works of art, Du Simitière used his artistic skills to portray the natural as well as the social and political life of the day, leaving a special kind of historical document. Himself a unique personality in colonial history, Du Simitière should be seen as a preserver of historical sources as well as a collector and researcher from the moment he crossed the Atlantic (Huth; Levey). Born in the city of Geneva, Du Simitière was just twenty when he com- pleted his art education in Amsterdam and sailed to the West Indies in 1757. He would never to return to Europe. While supporting himself by painting portraits of merchants and planters, and drawing many kinds of illustration, he traveled back and forth between the West Indies and the principal cities of North America for about ten years. In the spirit of a naturalist-adventurer seeking to explain the New World to the Old, he started to collect materials of the rich fauna and flora he discovered, gathering minerals, shells, and fossils, as well as making samples of dried insects and animals preserved in alcohol. He studied and described their habitats and peculiarities by writing data and organizing notes, cataloging and compiling bibliographies, but also by making accurate drawings and watercolors of specimens, maps, and natural scenes (Whitfield Jenks Bell, Patriot-Improvers). Unlike the earlier European royal collectors and scientists who eagerly waited for the galleons’ arrival to get their relics from faraway lands, Du Sim- itière took advantage of being in the middle of an exotic world that offered Pi e r r e Eu g e n e Du Si m i t i è r e a n d Th e Fi r s t Am e r i c a n Na t i o n a l Mu s e u m 135 him unique, continuous, and fascinating opportunities of direct observation. Not limited to the study of the natural world, Du Simitière also focused on the new society in which he was living. While Wunderkammern contained marvellous exemplars of natural oddity and richness from the Western as well as the Eastern Indies, Du Simitière’s interest in other peoples was a con- sequence of his direct experience of life in the New World. He observed and researched the customs of the native populations as well as slave uprisings. What he considered as his artificialia (ornamental dresses, weapons, utensils, musical instruments), appear closer to modern ethnography rather than to examples of the splendor of precious materials and craftsmanship as was fre- quently the case in previous centuries. He studied African and American In- dian antiquities and artifacts, taking notes on Indian life and culture, writing brief histories and recording vocabularies. Further, executions of Jamaican slave rebel leaders, black people playing music, harbors, houses and the street life of Kingston, were all scenes that Du Simitière captured in on-the-spot sketches. Those drawings and watercolors painted during the West Indian sojourns are described in the catalog of the Du Simitière exhibition held at the Library Company in 1985 as strikingly “modern” in their conception and execution. Here was an artist who displayed a mastery of the medium pos- sessed by few of his contemporaries (Pierre Eugene Du Simitière: His American Museum 200 Years After 1:2). Du Simitière lived for extended periods in several cities along the At- lantic coast, looking for the right place to settle. Before making Philadel- phia his permanent home in the early 1770s, he traveled for years from Pennsylvania throughout the New England colonies, enlarging his material collections, increasing his pictorial activities, and drawing his views of New York buildings and environment, etchings of Newport, Rhode Is- land, and many other places. In meticulous detail, he sketched the scenes before him with the intention of preserving an accurate record of life for future historical reference, more than to fashion singular works of art. All these time-consuming and unprofitable activities were soon replaced with an attraction to something new: the political unrest that started with the Stamp Act crisis. During the protest reaction to the Townshend Laws im- posing new taxes, Du Simitière did different sketches of the Boston Pope’s Day that he witnessed in 1767, when local patriots had already transformed it into a festival against the British Parliament policy in the colonies. The annual anti-Catholic celebration of November 5th, commemorating the failure 136 Gi a n Do m e n i c o Ia c h i n i of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot to blow up the British Parliament, was in no other part of the colonies so popular as in Boston. Originally, it was a noisy celebration where the companies of the North End and South End of the city paraded through the streets with effigies of the Pope and the Devil, as instigators of the plot, on their horse-drawn wagons together with the Stuart Pretender to the throne. The end of the feast was marked by a huge fight between the two companies to win the effigies of the others and burn them all in a bonfire; however, since the Stamp Act crisis, that day had been transformed into a political demonstration against the British laws, adding new effigies of actual public figures to blame unpopular officials and politicians. His comments and sketches on the wagons of both companies, drawn in black and red, with both quill and wash, are the most striking of a group

1. Pierre Eugene Du Simitière, Pope Day in Boston, sketches, 1767, The Library Company of Philadelphia. During his sojourn in Boston, Du Simitière did sketches of annual anti-Catholic celebration of November 5th that had been already transformed in a political demostration against London policy. In the middle of a single sheet of paper with drawings of North End and South End cart companies, the old State House in central King Street is traced in a light pencil. Pi e r r e Eu g e n e Du Si m i t i è r e a n d Th e Fi r s t Am e r i c a n Na t i o n a l Mu s e u m 137 of drawings he did in Boston and which now are preserved at the Library Company of Philadelphia [Fig. 1] (J. L. Bell). They depict both companies with a two-wheeled cart drawn by horses with a large lantern at one end of each wagon, a sort of tent of oiled paper painted with pictures and slogans and illuminated from inside. This structure could be “six or eight feet high,” and “sometimes a boy was placed inside of it, accoutred and dancing in an antic manner.” The presence of a hanged man besides the traditional effigies on the South End wagon, with a note that reads “Sur le pendu everybody’s humble servant & nobody’s friend” and the motto “liberty & property & no commissioners,” identify the political target of that year as Charles Paxton, a close friend of vice governor Thomas Hutchinson and longtime customs official. Known in town for his obsequious courtesy to higher-ups, Paxton had just returned to Boston as one of the new custom commissioners [Fig. 2]. The North End wagon was instead painted with slogans and symbols of unity with the contemporary struggle of British radical reformer John Wilkes in London

2. Pierre Eugene Du Simitière, Pope Day in Boston, 1767, sketch of the South End cart company, detail, The Library Company of Philadelphia. Both companies had a two-wheeled cart drawn by horses and a large lantern at one end of each wagon, a sort of tent of oiled paper painted with pictures and slogans and illuminated from inside. On the South End wagon, the presence of a hanged man besides the traditional celebration effigies, like the tall devil with the lantern, is a reference to Charles Paxton, the political target of that year, a close friend of the vice governor and longtime customs official who had just returned in town. 138 Gi a n Do m e n i c o Ia c h i n i

[Fig. 3]. On the same occasion, Du Simitière also sketched some of the celebrants: two young men dressed in long coats and hats carrying a walking stick and a trumpet, who could be captains of the companies, and a larger group of boys wearing turbans or gentlemanly nightcaps, often blowing horns or 3. Pierre Eugene Du Simitière, Pope Day in conch shells [Fig. 4]; a theatrical Boston, 1767, sketch of the North End cart and noisy event with giant pup- company, detail, The Library Company of Philadelphia. pets and teenagers in costumes, The North End wagon was painted with recorded by Du Simitière as “a slogans and symbols of unity with the rare eyewitness,” writes J. L. contemporary struggle of British radical Bell, “contemporaneous images reformer John Wilkes in London. of street politics in revolutionary America.” All these scenes are pictured in a single large sheet of paper where, in the middle, it is possible to recognize, barely traced in a light pencil in the background, the old State House in central King Street, made more popular a few years later by Paul Revere’s Boston Massacre engraving. The early aim of Du Sim- 4. Pierre Eugene Du Simitière, Pope Day in Boston, 1767, sketch of the street celebrants, itière’s collections and record- detail, The Library Company of Philadelphia. keeping was the writing of an Two young men dressed in long coats and encyclopedic “Natural and Civil hats carrying a walking stick and a trumpet, History of the West Indies and who could be captains of the companies, and North America,” which he never a larger group of boys wearing turbans or gentlemanly nightcaps, often blowing horns accomplished. In New York, dur- or conch shells. ing 1769 and 1770, he became a naturalized citizen and deepened Pi e r r e Eu g e n e Du Si m i t i è r e a n d Th e Fi r s t Am e r i c a n Na t i o n a l Mu s e u m 139

5. Pierre Eugene Du Simitière, Raising of the Liberty Pole in New York City, 1770, etching, The Library Company of Philadelphia. The only engraving made at the time of the Liberty Pole, the icon of New York’s political resistance to the British. A place of political meeting, activities and eventually fighting with the soldiers of the nearby barracks depicted in the background. For this reason it was surrounded by a tall iron cage for its protection, to guard against its being cut down like the previous pole closer to the barracks. his interest in the colonies’ growing controversy with London, beginning his custom of picking up from the street broadsides, pamphlets, handbills, and newspapers related to the politics of the day. The percentage of the now unique printed items that he gathered together is staggeringly high; these documents illuminate the revolutionary era as only informal productions of a period can. He was also responsible for the only engraving made at the time of the Liberty Pole, the icon of New York’s political resistance to the British, which was published in early 1770 and later attributed to Du Simitière, even if sometimes considered not up to his artistic standards. It was a complex pictorial representation of British hostilities and of the difficulties of the “road to liberty,” which also alluded to the case of Alexander MacDougall, the “Wilkes of America,” jailed for seditious libel [Fig. 5]. 140 Gi a n Do m e n i c o Ia c h i n i

In New York the Assembly had judged as seditious a broadside signed “A Son of Liberty” and arrested a leader of the local protest through the confession of the printer, exactly the same sequence that happened before in London with the notorious “45” issue of Wilkes’ journal North Briton which criticized the king. The number “45” was a well-known symbol in the colonial protest; the Boston Gazette wrote that even the charges on MacDougall were written on the forty-fifth register’s page of the Assembly, and he was continuously associated with it during the political agitation for his freedom. With the number 45 at the top of the fortified pole erected in the middle of the city common called The Fields, Du Simitière recalled the “Wilkes & Liberty” slogan popular on both sides of the Atlantic, honoring at the same time an important icon be- loved by New York patriots. Erected for the first time to celebrate the repeal of the Stamp Act as a surrogate of the Liberty Tree in Boston, the Liberty Pole in New York in the same way was soon a physical place of political meeting, activities, and eventually fighting with the soldiers of the nearby barracks depicted in the background. For this reason it was surrounded by a tall iron cage for its protection, to guard against its being cut down like the previous pole tha was located closer to the barracks. After several efforts to destroy the pole at the beginning of that year, the soldiers finally managed to cut it into pieces, which they piled up in front of Montagnie’s tavern on Broadway, a favorite gathering place of the Sons of Liberty. In response, there was a violent confrontation lasting two days, the so called “Battle of Golden Hill.” Days later, the Sons of Liberty bought a lot of land for their huge new pole, some sixty-eight feet tall, higher than any structure in town, drawn by six horses and escorted to the common by a large crowd of armed New Yorkers.

At The Republic’s Service

Once Du Simitière decided to settle in Philadelphia, the political history of North America became his main interest, and during the 70s his collecting acquired depth and authority in the area of Native American set- tlements in the trans-Appalachian West and their relations with the Anglo- Americans. He remained focused, however, on the increasing conflict with London, which in a few years led to open war. Of course he was not the only one to understand the historical moment, but not many thought of preserv- Pi e r r e Eu g e n e Du Si m i t i è r e a n d Th e Fi r s t Am e r i c a n Na t i o n a l Mu s e u m 141 ing the ephemeral documents of the Revolution, made of count- less printed materials important in uniting colonies so diverse and divided, and no one did so as systematically and energeti- cally as Du Simitière. Among his art-related activities from 1774 to 1776, Du Simitière did technical and allegorical illustrations for the Pennsylvania Magazine: or, American Monthly Museum. Although diverse in content, notes historian Paul G. Sifton, all six examples, bearing the P.E.D. initials, “point up various aspects of the newly emer- gent American character.” In addition to drawings of an elec- trical machine and a threshing machine, and a map of the “maritime parts” of Virginia, as well as sketches of other ingenious mechanisms for the 6. Pierre Eugene Du Simitière, The cleansing of docks and harbors, Pennsylvania Magazine: or American Monthly Du Simitière illustrated the Museum, frontispiece, 1775, The Library frontispiece of the short-lived Company of Philadelphia. magazine with a free adapta- Among the technical and allegorical pictures created for the short-lived magazine, Du tion of the Penn family coat Simitière illustrated the frontispiece with a of arms as its centerpiece [Fig. free adaptation of the Penn family coat of 6]. For that title page, which arms as its centerpiece. Actually executed he executed in February 1776, in February 1776, the coat of arms was the coat of arms was converted converted into the shield of a classical Goddess of Liberty holding the liberty staff into the shield of a classical with the Phrygian cap on the top. Goddess of Liberty holding the 142 Gi a n Do m e n i c o Ia c h i n i liberty staff with the Phrygian cap on the top. Surrounded by attributes of knowledge and arms, the goddess had on her right a tall pine tree, a symbol of the American wilderness common in New England, two flags, one of which appear to use the red and white “rebel stripes,” and a cannon up on a pedestal boldly labeled THE CONGRESS. Publisher Aitken and artist Du Simitière, underlines Sifton, “had decided on an assertively republican stand half a year before many of their more timorous contemporaries” (“Pierre Eugene Du Simitière: Illustrator” 577). Another of Du Simitière’s great passions were coins and medals, ancient and modern, European as well as Arabic or Asian. He studied them as a combination of heraldry and art. His knowledge and his remarkable collection made him the first numismatist of the New World. Also, his artistic ability was soon creatively involved in the art of heraldry, design- ing emblems, medals, and seals. In March of 1776, Congress appointed a committee to prepare a device for a gold medal to commemorate the surrender of Boston to Washington. Being considered an expert, John Ad- ams, the foremost member of the committee, turned to Du Simitière as a consultant and later personally visited his studio to view the drawings. In a letter to his wife, Adams described the obverse of the medal as depicting “Liberty with her spear and pileus, leaning on General Washington. The British Fleet in Boston Harbour, with all their sterns toward the town, the American troops, marching in” (Butterfield 96). Adams did not describe the reverse, since he perhaps did not see the unfinished sketch that had, “as a central device, an all-seeing eye of Providence in a triangle, with glory emanating from it. Underneath is an arm with sword in hand, and the entire central section is enclosed in a circle. Surrounding this circle is a ring of crudely drawn shields, with the name of each state of the new nation written within” [Fig. 7] (Orosz 39). In November, the Congress authorized payment for the medal, but Du Simitière’s designs were never executed. Even if unused, the allegorical female figure and the eye in a triangle radiating glory lived on in a much more important work for the same House of Representatives. When the Congress voted for a committee with Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin to prepare a design for the seal of the United States at the end of the day of July 4, 1776, Du Simitière again was invited as an expert consultant. Pi e r r e Eu g e n e Du Si m i t i è r e a n d Th e Fi r s t Am e r i c a n Na t i o n a l Mu s e u m 143

7. Pierre Eugene Du Simitière, George Washington Before Boston, obverse and reverse, designs for medal, 1776, The Library Company of Philadelphia. John Adams, member of the committee appointed by the Congress to prepare a device for a gold medal to commemorate the surrender of Boston to Washington, turned to Du Simitière as a consultant and later personally visited his studio to view the drawings. The allegorical female figure and the eye in a triangle radiating glory lived on in a more important work for the same House of Representatives. For the adoption of the Great Seal, the Congress went through three committees, and as many consultants, and only after six years finally approved the current device with the famous eagle and the shield. Du Simitière’s proposal submitted to the first committee was a sketch with only the obverse, con- sisting of a large shield at the center, with the classical Goddess of Liberty on its right and an American soldier in buckskin on its left, as supporters. Within the shield, at the center there were six small squares with emblems of England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Germany, and Netherlands, the European countries that had peopled the colonies. This area was surrounded by thirteen smaller shields labeled with the initials of each new American state. Above the whole scene, there was the eye of Providence in a radiant triangle. The motto, “E Pluribus Unum,” was on a banner underneath the shield [Fig. 8]. That August, the day after Adams saw the other committee members’ proposals and the sketch made by Du Simitière, he wrote to his wife introducing the consultant as a man of French origin and describing one of his 144 Gi a n Do m e n i c o Ia c h i n i

8. Pierre Eugene Du Simitière, The Great Seal, sketch, 1776, The Library of Congress. Even if never adopted by the Congress, some elements are apparent in the final version of 1782: the “eye,” later used on the reverse of the Great Seal on the pyramid’s top, the shield, a typical element in heraldry, and the Latin motto “E Pluribus Unum.” peculiar collecting activities: “This Mr. Du simitiere is a very curious Man. He has begun a Collection of Materials for an History of this Revolution. He begins with the first Advices of the tea Ships. He cuts out of the Newspa- pers, every Scrap of Intelligence, and every Piece of Speculation, and pastes it upon clean Paper, arranging them under the Head of the State to which they belong and intends to bind them up in Volumes. He has a List of every Speculations and Pamphlet concerning Independence, and another of those concerning Forms of Government” (qtd. in Patterson and Dougall 18). Even if not one of the proposals of the first committee was ever adopted by the Congress, some elements in Du Simitière’s sketch are apparent in the final version adopted in 1782. But while the “eye” later used on the reverse of the Great Seal on the pyramid’s top could be a familiar icon to masons and deists, both numerous among the revolutionary leaders, and the shield was a typical element in heraldry, the Latin motto was maybe the most original contribution of Du Simitière. Although a well-known motto to men of culture of the time, long since used by the monthly Gentleman’s Magazine for its annual collection, Du Simitière probably selected it on the suggestion of Franklin himself, who had been graphically emphasizing unity of the colonies for decades, from the old cartoon “JOIN, or DIE” to his recent “WE Pi e r r e Eu g e n e Du Si m i t i è r e a n d Th e Fi r s t Am e r i c a n Na t i o n a l Mu s e u m 145

ARE ONE” emblem for the paper money of the previous year. Actually, the Latin words used by Du Simitière were exactly translating what was graphically depicted: the diverse European origin of American people transposed to the diversity of the thirteen independent but united states. It appears even more appropriate for this design than for the Great Seal later adopted, argue Patterson and Dougall in their study, suggesting that Du Simitière could have started just from the motto to develop the whole picture. For the final version of the Seal adopted in 1782, the secretary of Con- gress Charles Thomson played a crucial role. Not only was he responsible for having restored the Latin motto E Pluribus Unum, which had disap- peared from the proposals of the second and third committee, but his was also the choice to make central the eagle under a shield with the flag’s stripes arranged vertically, and to stipulate that the bird had to be of the bald American species. The third committee introduced the eagle to the Great Seal, but Thomson strongly expanded the concept. “The eagle-with- a-shield was a device of long standing in European heraldry,” Orosz re- minds us, “so it is doubtful that this was solely Thomson’s idea. He may have found his inspiration in a book of emblems written by Joachim Ca- meranius in 1597 that was in the library of Benjamin Franklin,” although Franklin considered it inappropriate since it was an icon of imperial Eu- rope and aristocracy, rather than of independence and republicanism. His concern with national character shaped his emphatic rejection of the bald eagle, described in a letter to his daughter as “predatory,” “lazy,” and “abusive,” a bird of bad moral character that does not get his living honestly. Franklin was not displeased that the figure pictured was looking like a turkey more than a bald eagle. “For in truth,” wrote Franklin, “the turkey is in comparison a much more respectable bird, and withal a true original native of America” (Olson, Benjamin Franklin’s Vision 233-36). For similar reasons, he was in favor of the rattlesnake, a creature who reacts only in self-defense and lives only in America. “An emblem of magna- nimity and true courage,” wrote Franklin. Moreover, Franklin himself had introduced the snake for the first time as an emblem of political unity for all of the colonies with his historical “JOIN, or DIE” cartoon of the 50s. By the late 70s, the snake had evolved into the rattlesnake and was inter- nationally popular as an icon of colonial resistance to England.1 “Alternatively,” Thomson “may have received the idea of the eagle from his friend, Pierre Eugène Du Simitière,” suggests Orosz (45). Thomson 146 Gi a n Do m e n i c o Ia c h i n i knew Du Simitière from his services to Congressional committees and as member of the American Philosophical Society, the first learned society on the continent founded in Philadelphia by Franklin and other cultured citizens in 1743 for the purpose of “promoting useful knowledge.” According to Orosz, it seems likely that they shared an interest in coins and Du Sim- itière owned several from Russia, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire that used the eagle and the shield device. In his personal papers Du Simitière listed at least five examples of the use of eagles on coinage. Following the adoption of the Great Seal, there was a proliferation of eagles in American coins and still “today, by law, all coins of a denomination greater than 10 cents must carry an eagle on the reverse” (46). Through the Great Seal, Thomson tried to stress the American commitment to classical republicanism and the inclination of people to peace protected by force. The eagle supported himself by the shield, meaning that United States would have relied upon its own virtues, while his talons were clenching a bundle of arrows, another symbol of power through unity, and an olive branch, an ancient Greek symbol of peace. The noble bird handed over the features of regality and force, associated with the animal, to the republic and the people’s sovereignty. The olive branch was traditionally a dove’s attribute and her right talon clenching it was typically holding a sword, as with the Hapsburgs’ eagle. Priority then to peace and harmony, better suited for a republic, even if symbolized by a royal bird. With an eagle different from all the others (its “bald” white head), the new government maintained a bond with the Old World but at the same time claimed its independence from it.2 For the reverse of the Great Seal, Du Simitière’s legacy was similarly remarkable. The central element was an unfinished pyramid of 13 steps, a symbol of power and eternity for the new political experiment of the 13 former colonies, with the radiant “all-seeing eye” on the top giving his benediction. These features were suggested in his proposal to the third committee for the reverse of the seal by consultant William Barton. He de- rived the pyramid from the emblem printed on a 1778 continental banknote, designed by member of the Continental Congress and consultant for the second committee Francis Hopkinson, and the famous radiant eye from Du Simitière’s drawing for the medal to honor Washington liberating Boston and later used on the sketch of the obverse for the first committee. The eye Pi e r r e Eu g e n e Du Si m i t i è r e a n d Th e Fi r s t Am e r i c a n Na t i o n a l Mu s e u m 147 in the radiant triangle, an ancient symbol of humanity’s accumulation of knowledge, at the same time could refer to the Supreme Being of deism, so common among the cultured elite of colonial society; or to the eye of Providence of the Christian religion; or to the icon of god’s omniscience so familiar to freemasonry, though there is not a single proof of the fact that Du Simitière had ever been a mason. Thomson also selected the Latin mot- toes “Annuit Coeptis,” meaning “has favored our undertaking,” with the tacit subject of god, and “Novus Ordo Seclorum,” indicating the beginning of “a new order of ages.” In other words, with divine guidance, the United States had ventured upon a new era of human history. Considering Du Simitière’s early collecting of revolutionary printed documents, as well as his artistic involvement in the colonial struggle against London, with engravings, seals, and medals, it is unlikely that he “remained neutral during the Revolution,” as Orosz deduces from the fact that he received a donation of valuable medals from John Montressor, en- gineer-in-chief of the British Armies in America. Even if Orosz presented Du Simitière as “on good terms with both sides,” to preserve his collection intact throughout the war, on the contrary for Hans Huth he remained what he always had been, “a Republican born and bred,” to cite Du Sim- itière’s own words preserved in his papers in the Library of Congress (Orosz 34; Huth 320). At the same time, documents tell us that in 1777 he was drafted into the Pennsylvania militia, and a heavy fine was imposed upon him for not supplying a substitute. He then petitioned to the Supreme Executive Council for the remission of the fine presenting himself as a for- eigner, but being strangely silent on the fact that he had become a naturalized citizen of New York on May 1769 (Potts 341-42). Similarly there are no portraits or self-portraits known of his appearance, and almost as unknown are Du Simitière’s explicit comments on political theory and history. For certain, his several activities seem to have been enough to make him a suspected agent of the rebel Congress and so he was arrested when the British army occupied Philadelphia in 1777. Re- leased after three weeks in jail, avoiding harsh treatment and the requisi- tion of his collections, Du Simitière went back to what he had been doing to eke out a living: painting portraits and miniatures, drawing illustrations, seals, book frontispieces, and maps, making calligraphic designs and technical pictures, and serving as translator. Four different colonies asked 148 Gi a n Do m e n i c o Ia c h i n i

9. Pierre Eugene Du Simitière, New Jersey seal, Banknote, 1781. 10. Pierre Eugene Du Simitière, Delaware seal, Banknote, 1777. In late 70s, four different colonies asked Du Sim- itière to design their state seals, but only those for New Jersey and Delaware were finally adopted. These are still in use today. him to design their state seals, but only those for New Jersey and Delaware were finally adopted. These are still in use today. Acquainted with each other, Franklin and Du Simitière were again together when advising the commission preparing the resolution for the state seal of Virginia. Du Simitière had also presented his own device without suc- cess, showing “in the field the cross of St. George (as a remnant of the ancient Virginia coat of arms) with a knife in the center as an allusion to the name the Indians gave to this state” (Huth 322-23).3 Each one of the quarters had a tobacco plant, two wheat sheaves, a stalk of Indian corn and four fasces allud- ing to the great rivers of the state. A figure representing Sir Walter Raleigh, first colonizer of that land, planting the standard of liberty with the words of the Magna Charta written on it, supported the escutcheon on the left, while on the right there was a contemporary Virginia rifleman.4 Presented in May 1777, the seal of New Jersey included several state symbols [Fig. 9]. Above a shield with three plows on it, indicating the im- portance of agriculture, the profile of a horse’s head, the commonly-known animal for New Jersey, was upon the helmet of a forward-facing knight, representing self-government. A liberty goddess, with the classical spear and pileus, and Ceres, the Roman Goddess of grain holding a full cornucopia symbolizing abundance, were portrayed on both sides of the central device. Pi e r r e Eu g e n e Du Si m i t i è r e a n d Th e Fi r s t Am e r i c a n Na t i o n a l Mu s e u m 149

On the whole it was an image of “liberty and prosperity,” as years later will be expressed into writing on the banner added at the bottom of the seal. If Du Simitière’s design of the Georgia seal was not accepted and remains unknown, the one for Delaware, adopted in February 1777, remains the same with its main components still in use [Fig. 10]. Below a ship, in honor of the local building industry and coastal commerce, Du Simitière put an escutcheon with a wheat sheaf, Indian corn, and an ox on his lower area, highlighting the agricultural basis of the state’s economic life. The same meaning is sig- naled by the farmer on the left side of the escutcheon, while the militiaman on the right asserts the crucial role of the citizen-soldier to the maintenance of liberty. Although the different seals had several common elements, Du Simitière proved himself of striking ability and originality in their conception and rendition. During these years Du Sim- itière’s studio attached to his house, with rooms accommo- dating the different collections, was more and more visited for research and discussion by political and military leaders, members of Congress, scientists, and erudite travellers as well as col- leagues of the American Philo- sophical Society, where he was a member and curator. In 1779 he started to draw from life a series of 13 profile portraits of the lead- 11. Pierre Eugene Du Simitière, Charles Thompson Esqr., 1783, etching, The Library ers of the Revolution, includ- Company of Philadelphia. ing Congress secretary Charles In 1779 Du Simitière started to draw from life Thomson [Fig. 11], New Yorker a series of 13 profile portraits of the leaders of Gouverneur Morris, and famous the Revolution, including Congress secretary revolutionary leader John Dick- Charles Thomson. Printed in Europe, only first edition of the series was issued without the inson, to name few. But the most names and titles of the leaders to not endanger important work of this series is its transmittal to America during the war. 150 Gi a n Do m e n i c o Ia c h i n i

the portrait of General Washing- ton [Fig. 12], that bore a special likeness and was used in 1791 on the “Washington cent” coin. “Mr. William S. Baker, an authority on Washington portraits, states it to be the first profile portrait known, and with his usual accuracy gives the probable date of the original sketch, which he supposes to have been in lead- pencil or water-colors taken from life, in the winter of 1778-1779” (Huth 323-25; Potts 354-55). Painted portraits at the time were the only way to preserve a person’s likeness and, in the case of famous persons, a handful of 12. Pierre Eugene Du Simitière, His Excel- original portraits would never lency General Washington, 1783, etching, The be enough to satisfy the peo- Library Company of Philadelphia. ple’s curiosity. A particular sign Prabably the first profile portrait known, taken from life in the winter of 1778-79, of an individual’s fame was the bore a special likeness of the general and wide distribution of engraved was later used for the “Washington cent” versions of paintings taken from coin in 1791. life, which made available cheap reproductions for sale to the av- erage citizen. For years after the outbreak of the Revolution most Europeans and a majority of Americans had never seen a good likeness of Washington nor of other patriots who were defying the mighty British Crown. Du Simitière wanted to exploit this market, seeing the opportunity for the sale of a printed sets of portraits, but his luck with these portraits was disastrous. Engraved later in Paris and London, sales of the series were small in Europe because of pirated editions appearing on the market almost instantly, and in America they sold poorly too, bringing him very little money or international fame. “The first edition of the published Pi e r r e Eu g e n e Du Si m i t i è r e a n d Th e Fi r s t Am e r i c a n Na t i o n a l Mu s e u m 151 series was issued without the names of those represented because it was thought that titling the portraits would have endangered their transmittal to America during the war” (Huth 324). A second edition with names and titles under each head was printed toward the end of 1782, when the danger had passed. Du Simitière sought also to capitalize on the materials he had accu- mulated over so many years of research on the history of the American Revolution, an event to which he had also been a witness, by submit- ting a proposal to the Congress to publish a work containing “Memoirs and Observations on the Origin and Present State of North America,” and thus seeking approval and financial support. Members of the committee responsible for the evaluation, one of whom was John Dickinson, visited Du Simitière’s studio several times in 1780 and were so impressed by his materials and knowledge that they recommended that he be appointed “Historiographer to the Congress of the United States” and receive $2,000 yearly for three years. Congress approved the committee report but not the proposed stipend. This rejection was a psychological and financial blow from which Du Simitière never recovered. Many years later, in 1814, John Adams, who had also been impressed by his collections and aims when vis- iting him in Philadelphia, wrote a letter to then Vice-President Elbridge Gerry in which he lamented the failure to have “a man of sense and letters appointed in each State to collect memorials of the rise and progress and termination of the Revolution”; as he concluded, “we should now possess a monument of more inestimable value then all the histories and orations that have been written” (qtd. in Huth 321). A small amount of state money was voted Du Simitière by the Penn- sylvania Assembly in 1781, and the same year the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University) awarded him an honorary degree of Master of Arts, which deeply touched the artist who had no formal university education. None of these honors helped solve the financial problems that pushed him toward another use of his collection: the opening of the American Museum. 152 Gi a n Do m e n i c o Ia c h i n i

His American Museum

Although Du Simitière’s collection had always been open to those interested to visit him, he formally opened the museum to the general public on April 17, 1782. Advertised in several Pennsylvania newspapers, he presented it as a collection of curiosities of the New World, both natural and artificial. Compared with the lavish cabinets of European royalty, Du Simitière’s collection was rather small and meager: however, it was different from the early museums of the Old World, which were reserved for the elite and where entry was often considered a privilege. The American Mu- seum catered at the same time to elite and popular audiences, and it always maintained a high level of quality, never integrating popular amusements into the exhibitions and never catering to low cultural tastes (Dennett 10- 12; Semonin 173-74, 187-88). In 1783, a year after the opening of the museum, the number of Du Simitière’s visitors was steadily increasing as the war neared its end. These were good days for the busy life of Philadelphia, which Du Simitière described in colorful terms:

the Paris and the Hague of America, where brilliancy of our beau monde and the sumptuosity and elegancy of their entertainments rivals those of the old world ... we see the river crowded with ships from various nations displaying the flags of their respective sovereigns, except that of England, add to that the great concours of Strangers that resorts here from all parts, and the immense quantity and variety of goods which fills our stores, new buildings erecting in every part of the town, and then you have a light sketch of what’s Philadel- phia’s present appearance (Du Simitière’s Letterbook).5

Unfortunately Du Simitière did not leave a catalogue of his museum’s holdings, as was the fashion for European Wunderkammern to do, when artists were employed to portray the single pieces later engraved for book printing to draw attention to “special objects” and promote knowledge. Drawings that Du Simitière did by himself were apparently never printed in book form as was the case of earlier collectors, with their splendid opening page containing a large plate showing the entire collection, where each Pi e r r e Eu g e n e Du Si m i t i è r e a n d Th e Fi r s t Am e r i c a n Na t i o n a l Mu s e u m 153 item could be distin- guished in great detail. Actually the only extant printed documents of Du Simitière’s that provide us with a de- tailed description of his holdings are the printed broadside announcing the museum’s opening and the broadside with a list of items for sale a few years later, published after his death. On introducing the public to the museum’s content on his opening broadside, Du Simitière gave “a short enumera- tion of the subjects of which it is composed, collected from most parts of America, the West-Indies, Africa, 13. Pierre Eugene Du Simitière, American Museum, the East-Indies, and advertising broadside, June 1, 1782, The Library Europe” [Fig. 13]. The Company of Philadelphia. collections were divided Although Du Simitière’s collections had always been open to those interested to visit him, he formally in two main categories, opened the museum to the general public on April “Natural Curiosities” 17, 1782. There is no catalogue of his museum’s and “Artificial Curiosi- holdings, but the printed broadside announcing the ties,” with the first one opening listed its collections arranged in “natural” detailing several subcate- and “artificial” curiosities from Old and New World. Open four days a week in Arch Street, visitors of the gories. The natural ones first real museum of America could receive a tour from were more considerable Du Simitière himself at half dollar each. and included “Marine 154 Gi a n Do m e n i c o Ia c h i n i

Productions,” as rare and beautiful shells, sea-eggs, corals, sea-plants, fish, tortoises, crabs and sea-stars, and “Land Production,” with rare birds and a variety of snakes, lizards, bats, insects and worms, mostly from different parts of the West-Indies. Ores of various metals together with agates, jaspers, cornelian, onyx, crystals, quartz and other special pebbles were listed as “Fossils,” while apart were grouped the “Petrifications” of different kinds of wood, plants, fruits, reptiles, insects, bones or teeth. “Botany” closed the “Natural Curiosities” presenting a “considerable Collection of the most curious Plants of the West-Indies,” and of the “productions of those Plants; such as their Wood, Bark, Fruits, Pods, Kernels and Seeds, all in the highest preservation.” With a much less specific classification, the “Artificial Curiosities” listed the presence of antiquities of Indians of the West as well as of the North-American Indians, and of ornamental dresses of modern Indians of North and South-America, with their weapons and utensils. “Various weapons, musical instruments and utensils of the Negroes, from the coast of Guinea, and the West-Indies” were exhibited too, followed by a collection of “curious” paintings in oil, crayons, water-colors, miniature, enamel, and china. This approach differed from the search for the preciousness of the “artificialia” traditionally part of the old Wunderkammer finds. But, more than a “Curio Cabinet,” what made the American Museum special and showed that Du Simitière was planning far ahead of his time was the section which he devoted to the history of his adopted country, though he did not mention it in his opening broadside:

He was the first man to realize that the events of the war for liberty deserved recording for posterity. Further, Du Simitière realized that if this were not done while current material was still available, important documentary evidence would be lost forever. Printed or written source materials were to be supplemented in his museum by historical objects pertaining to particular subjects, such as seals, medals, representations of monuments, views and prints. (Huth 319)

Putting history on exhibit for Du Simitière meant research and study; for him, this was the only way to make it possible for the historical material to represent certain ideas, arranged logically and in a definite order. “If this was so,” concludes Huth, “it can be claimed that Du Simitière’s idea of Pi e r r e Eu g e n e Du Si m i t i è r e a n d Th e Fi r s t Am e r i c a n Na t i o n a l Mu s e u m 155 presenting historical material was a most progressive one, closely related to the modern conception of the historical museum” (Huth 319). As we know, the concept of the “history museum” developed more recently than those devoted to art and science. It was, at first, a spin-off from the art collection, a development of sixteenth-century wealthy hu- manists and scholars collecting in their residences the portraits of famous men, including military commanders and statesman. Privately owned and made available to the general public for profit, Du Simitière’s Amer- ican Museum has been difficult for historians to assess. It must be as- sumed, since a catalog or list of the exhibited material is not extant, that the painting rooms of the American Museum were decorated with frames and glass jars containing creatures preserved in spirits, coins and medals displayed in cabinets next to examples of minerals and fossils, Native American arms or artifacts, with a special section made of drawings and portraits of revolutionary leaders and statesmen, as well as hundreds of related illustrated prints, political graphics, and literature (Alexander 60-61). In a letter dated 1812, Charles Willson Peale recalled Du Sim- itière as “fond of collecting subjects of natural History, his Painting room was ornamented with frames of Butterflies, and he had a considerable number of Snakes &c in spirits – he also collected medals and coins, he was a Batchelor and such was his chief amusement.”6 Open four days a week in Arch Street, with an entrance fee of 50 cents, tickets sales were the only means by which Du Simitière could maintain and expand his collection, even if the admission fees never covered his ex- penses. From the broadside advertising the opening, we know that visitors could receive a tour from Du Simitière himself, in groups of not more than eight, lasting for not more than one hour. Although his financial situation deteriorated, instead of raising money by selling part of his collection, he continued to add artifacts to his museum. In March of 1783, an illness caused the amputation of a section of a finger on his left hand. In terrible pain for the following weeks, he was unable to keep the museum open for about a month and unable to draw, thereby losing his two main sources of income. So he began to take on drawing pupils, like Thomas Jefferson’s daughter Martha, without solving the increasing difficulty of meeting his payments. His last letters and records document a gradual breakdown of his physical strength and spirit, but even in that desperate state he could not bear to part with treasures it had taken him a lifetime to collect. When 156 Gi a n Do m e n i c o Ia c h i n i he died on October 1784, at 47 years old, his museum was still intact. “Of Du Simitière,” wrote Orosz, “it can truly be said that he would rather collect than eat, for the generally accepted cause of his death was starvation” (Orosz 50-51). About a year after Du Simitière’s death, Reverend William Gordon wrote to Washington asking the president about available portraits of the military leaders of the war for his first history of the Revolution. By an irony of fate, in his answer of March 8, 1785, Washington recommended Du Simitière’s portraits for a book he had desperately tried to write on several previous occasions: “If Mr. Du’ Simitire is living, and at Philad[elphi]a, it is possible he may have miniature engravings of most, if not all the military characters you want, and in their proper dresses: he drew many good likenesses from life, and got them engraved at Paris for sale; among these I have seen Gen[era]l Gates, Baron de Steuben etc., as also that of your h[um]ble serv[an]t” (Fitzpatrick 96). To cover Du Simitière’s debts, the contents of the American Museum had to be sold. The Library Company secured virtually all the printed materials, the most valuable purchase it ever made. Differently from the museum’s opening poster, the broadside “For Sale at Public Vendue,” published in 1785, reveals the large collection of printed material owned by Du Simitière, and the great majority of the items listed in the broadside is about almanacs, pamphlet, books, and newspapers. The whole list consists of 36 lots, with hundreds of books of various sizes grouped under titles such as “Geography and Astronomy,” “Drawing,” “Heraldry,” “History,” “Natural History,” “Occult Philosophy,” or “Voyages and Travels,” to name a few. The greatest lot of books is the one named “Books and Papers related to America,” followed by another lot of “News-Papers,” mostly from Penn- sylvania and New York. Almost all of the materials presented a few years before in the museum’s broadside are gathered in the quite shrunken section of “Curiosities,” occupying now just a marginal space between “Coins” and “Drawings & Prints.” Even though comprising a handful of lots, this last section actually contains several portfolios with several hundreds of drawings and maps, and over one thousand prints. Another couple of portfolios are grouped under the “Horti Sicci” section, about dried plants or herbarium. Finally, in addition to the “Coins” section, “a Mahogony Cabinet containing ancient Pi e r r e Eu g e n e Du Si m i t i è r e a n d Th e Fi r s t Am e r i c a n Na t i o n a l Mu s e u m 157 and modern Gold, Silver and Copper Coins and Medals,” the last broadside’s lot list also includes a collection of American paper money. Since Du Simitière left no heirs, Matthew Clarkson, later mayor of Philadelphia, and the bookseller Ebenezer Hazard were appointed executors. “Although Hazard later claimed he had accepted the post with a view to prevent his museum from being scattered,” Orosz underlined sarcastically, “the bookseller and his partner worked with dispatch to do just the opposite” (Orosz 51). Much of the collection not bought by the Library Company ended up in the possession of the two executors appointed for the sale, and probably some of the natural history specimens reappeared in the Peale’s Museum. Usually credited as the first one in United States, Peale’s Museum opened later in 1785 in the same city of Philadelphia, displaying portraits of the Founding Fathers and other revolutionary leaders. In a similar way, Peale’s Museum put together his great interest for the natural world and American history, was privately owned, and was unsuccessful in gaining government funding. Though it survived longer, Peale was finally forced to close and sell his collections. Bought up in part by Phineas T. Barnum for his more famous American Museum, some items might well have come originally from Du Simitière (Huth 321). But they would have been lost forever when Barnum’s museum went up in flames in 1865.

Notes

1 See also, Lester C. Olson, Emblems of American Community. Franklin printed the “JOIN, or DIE” cartoon with the snake cut in many parts to represent the colonies. It is considered the first political cartoon published by an American newspaper and appeared in his Penn- sylvania Gazette on May 9, 1754, to promote, at the forthcoming Congress of Albany, the unity of the colonies against the French expansion in the Ohio valley. About a decade later, during the protest against the Stamp Act, without informing Franklin the radicals in New York reused it on the masthead of the Constitutional Courant to call again for the colonies unity, but this time against the new London policy. The chopped snake, soon known as symbol of the hoped-for union of colonial protest along the continental coast, was later re- assembled and changed into a rattlesnake on the military flags as the war was on. The new mortal bite of the American serpent was in response to the supposed weakness often blamed on the colonial army. “I was wholly at a loss what to make of the rattles,” wrote Franklin, considering the positive qualities of the rattlesnake in a letter published in the Pennsylvania Journal on December 27, 1777, “till I went back and counted them and found them just 158 Gi a n Do m e n i c o Ia c h i n i thirteen, exactly the number of the Colonies united in America; and I recollected too that this was the only part of the Snake which increased in numbers.” See also Matthews. 2 See also Valtz Mannucci. 3 Also a version of this design is now among the Jefferson papers, 1775-1776, in the Library of Congress, Division of Manuscripts, with the inscription: “Coat of arms of Vir- ginia as Devised by M. Du Simitière.” 4 See also Evans. 5 See Handbook of Manuscripts in the Library of Congress. Other Du Simitière papers are in the Library of Company of Philadelphia, Ridgway Branch: see Descriptive Catalogue of the Du Simitière Papers. See also, Paul G. Sifton, ed., Historiographer to the United States. 6 Letter to Rembrandt Peale, 28 October 1812 (qtd. in J.L. Bell 209-10).

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